Black Bloc Asks "What's Up With That"

Copenhagen Black Bloc asks, "So just how do you want to proceed?"

The following is from Guerrilla News.

GreenPeace/GreenPolice: Communique of Copenhagen Black Bloc

This communique was given out by a portion of the Black Bloc during the march to the Bella Centre on Saturday at the protests against the U.N. COP-15. Shortly after releasing this communique, windows of the Danish stock exchange and Foreign Ministry were broken. When the police attempted arrests, the Black Bloc was physically prevented by some members of Climate Justice Action from joining the “System Change Not Climate Change” bloc. While the COP15 is over, the debate over the role of internal policing and the “non-violence” code of Climate Justice Action has just begun in the European autonomous movements.

Amongst thousands of people who want to save the world, we are getting together to march to the Bella Centre, but something feels wrong. The slogans just seem too familiar. “Traditional wisdom and new technology must go hand in hand.” Haven’t we been reading them on the ads all over town?

Everyone is playing their role in the summit, just like in a movie. And there are even different versions of the same stage, distinguished mostly by their budgets. The building of the Klimaforum resembles a space station mixed together with a contemporary art museum. Amongst the graffiti, drugs and reggae music in Christiania, the dream is cheaper but more entertaining. Inside the perfectly sterile and opulent Bella Centre, the NGOs are working hard with the delegates on a treaty to rescue us all. Outside, the same faces tell us on loudspeakers to apply “political pressure” to influence the negotiations.

There seems to be a common logic between the government delegates, the NGOs who control the march, and even the radical ecological activists: we are all saving humanity together. Who would not want to fight for this? And even if you did not, do you even have a choice? No one seems to have the time to take a pause and think about what we are supposed to save, what humanity means. What does it imply to have faith in the existence of a single political unit that binds us all together? In the united and pacified world imagined in Copenhagen, politics become obsolete. What if the mobilization of the entire city and even the protests were nothing but an immense peacekeeping operation?

In times of war, there is a call for submission behind every call for unity. Everyone agrees that capitalism is in crisis, that the previous forms of management will not suffice. This summit may be the most obvious sign yet of the shape of the management to come, where everyone’s contribution is obligatory. This step could be described as social engineering. An utopian attempt to produce an entirely controlled life, a totally calculable existence by making us forget that some struggles cannot be reduced to power games, that sometimes friendships are more than just economics. This living excess cannot be described but can only be experienced. What can be described though is how this operation functions: our living is first fragmented into several quantifiable bits and pieces and then resold to us as the real thing. “Hope in a bottle”.

The enthusiasm with which all political stripes have been converted to ecology teaches us about the true nature of this new green universal religion. From the heart of the Bella Centre to the most passionate of activists, beyond all differences in tone, one can hear the single and only call to submit yourself. To sacrifice everything that makes life worth living in the name of life itself. To adjourn the present to save the future. To control our desires, and most of all, to not disturb the delicate equilibrium. Ecology presupposes the same conception of existence that characterizes the police: danger is everywhere, and first of all, in ourselves.

When the success of this summit depends on the participation of the population in every city centre,

WHERE DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD GO?

And if police, in all its forms, is the new essence of global politics,

WHAT DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD DO?